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Kassandra motioned a series of gestures towards the interface of the communications system. It responded with a short static hum.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Engineer Donnelly,” Kassandra acknowledged. “Is Tali’Zorah nar Rayya with you at the moment?”
“The Quarian? I think she’s at the core, let me check.”
After a short moment, a familiar, filtered voice came through the loudspeaker. “What can I do for you, my love?”
“Remember when we talked about music and music recording in species with vocal communication systems?”
“I do remember very well. Why do you ask?”
“I found a rare antiquity last time we were on Omega. One of the first electrically recorded, somewhat widely available Human piece of music. And I got it to work. Come to my quarters if you are interested.”
Kassandra was barely fiddling around with the gramophone for half a minute before the door to her quarters swished open. She smiled to herself, not turning around yet. “Excited, aren’t we?”
“You do know how much galactic technological history delights me,” Tali responded while taking long steps into the room.
Kassandra was kneeling in front of the small end table next to the couch corner of her quarters. She hoped the electric coupling would now be working as intended. But with antiquities like these, it was hard to tell.
“So, technically, this should work now. It’s called a gramophone. The recording is of a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa di Requiem. The label has worn off, so I couldn’t tell you the band.”
“It should work?”
“Hey, I thought, why not have the most tech-savvy soul on board when I first try this out? You’d probably know how to fix this if need be.”
“Aw. That is very sweet of you. And yes, I would know how to do that, should the need arise.”
“Quarter control, initiate seal-off of this chamber,” Kassandra ordered.
“Acknowledged,” the VI dutifully replied. The outer shutters were closing the windows, and a couple of devices around the room shut off. With a soft hiss, the door’s hydraulics closed themselves shut.
“Are the acoustics better that way?” Tali wondered.
“No. Well, not that I could hear a difference. I just don’t like the idea of Cerberus listening in to every word I say from time to time.”
“Well, the AI... I mean, EDI can still hear you, can’t she?”
“I’ve set her to record only when explicitly asked while you are in any room. I don’t want you to constantly feel like you are under surveillance, not from an AI and especially not Cerberus.”
Kassandra could hear Tali softly exhale through the filter. “That is more accommodation than I expected in this ship.”
“Hey, I love you, remember? Of course I want to give you a modicum of safety here.” Kassandra smiled at Tali, who was still looking at the gramophone.
“Hmm.”
“Ready to listen to the sound of history?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Tali did a little wiggle with her feet. Kassandra was far too aware of anthropocentrism to believe herself capable of understanding what they symbolized, but she couldn’t help but find them adorable every time Tali did them.
With the flick of a switch and a button, the gramophone sprung to life. A bit of static scratching was audible at first, and then, when the plate began to spin fully, a couple of stringed instruments began a melancholic intro.
Kassandra jumped up in victory and stretched her hands into the air. “Hah! I did it!”
Tali took Kassandra’s hand into her own. “Let’s sit down and listen, shall we?”
The solemn first ten minutes of the Requiem were all too familiar, if a bit worn by the age of the plate. Tali moved as close as possible to Kassandra, her upper thigh touching Kassandra’s thigh, her head resting on Kassandra’s shoulder. Even with the advanced insulation layers of the suit, Kassandra felt the heat radiating from the Quarian. Tali’s fingers felt warm against the skin of Kassandra’s hands. For a long moment, she just savoured this moment.
“You said this was one of the first electric Human recordings?”
“Yes. Produced a couple of standard years after the introduction of electric recording and electric sounds.”
“It doesn’t sound like a magnetic speaker.”
“It isn’t. The movement of the rotation of the plate, in addition to minuscule height differences spiralling around the plate, excite the needle, which mechanically amplifies the sound. Only the rotation is electrical”
“Fascinating. I’ve heard of some cultures going mechanical for sound reproduction, but I’ve yet to encounter such an unnecessarily complicated hybrid form.”
“I promise you, it was state of the art when it was first released.”
“No offence to Humanity intended.”
“Full offence to Humanity required,” Kassandra countered.
“How old is it, exactly?”
“Do you want to take a guess?”
“Hmm. My people first started electric sound recording around minus five hundred galactic standard. Perhaps a millennium later? Five hundred galactic standard? But I also know that Human history is weird.”
“Five hundred is your best guess?”
“As much as I like riddles, this one is above me.”
“You were off by nearly two millennia. The music was composed at 2381 galactic standard, and it this device and the plate date back to around 2435 galactic standard.”
“This was constructed barely a few years after the Geth War?”
“I know. Human history traversed light years in the last three centuries.”
“Hmm. What does the music mean?”
“I guess Latin isn’t installed on your universal translator?”
“Oh, I do get a translation, but I can’t decipher their actual meaning.”
Kassandra chuckled. “Oh. Yeah. The text is a sort of remembrance and warning and prayer from a bunch of religious fanatics from Rome, Earth. Written around the 18th century galactic standard.”
“I do find it fascinating this device is so incompatible with other Human devices. Some of the ships in the Migrant Fleet have existed for three hundred years. Half of the Rayya consists of components that predate us leaving Rannoch. We could not survive if the children did not learn to understand and use the technology of their predecessors. Backwards compatibility is a matter of life and death for us.”
“Huh. I never thought about it that way. Humanity has weird relationships to technology and tradition, that is true. Some parts of Humanity have justified their violence with a constructed and false sense of their own traditions. And they have so often directed their violence at other parts of Humanity who carried actual, beautiful traditions. And then the most violent groups of Humanity raced each other in terms of technology to out-violence each other with more and more intricate technologies of violence.”
Kassandra sighed. “And I feel like that violence that such a small group of Humanity forced upon all of Earth is what we carried into the stars. Once we found the Prothean archive on Mars, we suddenly were met with the realization that we were not alone. That there were other souls all across the stars. All across the universe, perhaps! We reached out into the stars and found living, thinking, feeling others! And what did we do? We declared war on them.”
Kassandra shook her head. “The Yagh are forbidden from council space and all communications have been broken off since they massacred a council delegation. The Humans made contact with the Turians and wage war and what do we get? Special council treatment and no consequences.”
She lay her arm around Tali’s shoulder, pressing her even closer. “I personally find it magnificent that souls stretch across all the known universe. Against all the coldness and the vacuum of space, thousand and more disconnected times, the universe decided that feelings and thoughts should exist. The stars are full of souls. We reached out and found that we were never alone. I signed up with the Alliance not because I hold particular fondness of them, but because I needed to see for myself that the stars feel and breathe. I needed to leave Earth behind.”
Tali laughed. “So many people know your name as the heroic soldier that saved the Citadel. And yet how many know that behind the tough story of combat stands a big romantic? I mean, I see why you left Earth. Though I don’t think I will ever truly understand why someone would willingly leave their homeworld.”
“I wish for you that you will see Rannoch with your own eyes within your lifetime.”
“Thank you. I know you mean it.”
For a moment they didn’t say anything. The ups and downs of Verdi’s Requiem barely managed to line up with their conversation, Kassandra bemused.
“Would you considered this music particularly suited for a romantic moment?” Tali inquired.
“I really can’t think of anything less romantic than a catholic opera,” Kassandra replied truthfully. “But being with you is a romantic moment nonetheless, no matter the background music.”
“Do you... remember what we talked about a while ago? About us... being together? Being intimate? I have been doing a lot of research, done a lot of preparations, taken a lot of antibiotics. And the medical papers suggest that most encounters between Humans and Quarians end without major complications...”
“‘Most’ seems to be quite a load-bearing term here. What percentage and what complications are we talking about here, exactly?”
“I...” Tali’s voice turned to a whisper. “Well. Point seven percent of encounters end with heavy prionic poisoning, since all bodily fluids carry some amino acids that act rather hostile in our bodies, and, well, point three percent of encounters end in some major infections that...” Tali’s voice gradually crawled closer to breaking.
Kassandra placed her hand on the side of Tali’s helmet, turning her around until she could look into the glowing dots that managed to break through the mask’s heavy purple coating. “Tali, you are aware that I love you, right?”
“...Yes.”
“Are you aware that my love for you is not bound to conditions? That it is an offer, a gift, that I offer you not in exchange for anything I expect in return but because you make my heart light up?”
“...Yes. You are very sweet and direct with your words. Always. That’s one of the reasons why I love you, too.”
“Those suits allow for some haptic feedback, yes?”
“Well, yes, of course. We have opposable digits that work better when they have haptic feedback. Most of the suit actually allows for some degree of haptic feedback.”
“When I take your hand into mine, can you feel it?”
“Yes. It feels so nice, every time.”
“Now, I may not have had the best grades in xenoanatomy courses while in uni, but I do remember hearing that you do have several erogenous zones at some places of your body that are not your head, right? Some of them have to be in places where you can feel external touch.”
“Uh... yes. The suit can be programmed to allow for some more sensitivity in those areas when needed.”
“So why do you feel like you need to take off your suit and mask, given all that risk? Do you want it to be exactly like that so much that the risks become unimportant to you? Because I do not want you to risk your life for some mediocre sex with some random Human woman.”
“Commander Shepard, Heroine of the Citadel, first Human Spectre, galaxy-renowned scion of Earth. You know. Some random Human woman,” Tali wryly countered.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Also, mediocre sex? What about all those vids that rank you among the most desired humans in the galaxy? Shouldn’t you at least have some experience?”
“Well, I did have sex with Liara that time. That’s... the full extent of my experience. Also, you are deliberately distracting from the main topic at hand. I will not allow that.”
“I...” Tali sighed. “I have heard how Humans talk about us. I know how Humans feel about us. And I have read of so many Quarians with Human lovers whose Human wasn’t happy with just... They all want something natural... I... I just want you to feel fully happy with this. With me.”
“Fucking hell,” Kassandra cursed, slowly pulling her hand away from Tali’s helmet, and standing up. “I am happy beyond measure with you. Fucking hell,” she repeated, walking to the large overhead window on the other side of the room.
“VI, please raise the window shutter,” Kassandra asked.
“Acknowledged.” Slowly, the light of the stars, blurred into an erratically blinking magenta at their current sub-zero-weight speed, revealed itself.
“For the generation of Humans my grandmother belonged to, there was an insurmountable barrier. Nothing was said to be able to travel faster than light. The physicists that made that statement underestimated us. Nothing is able to spread faster than the Human violence that props up but a handful of members of my species. Goddesses, Tali, I am so sorry for what my kin have done to this galaxy in but so few years. I truly am. I...”
Her monologue was interrupted by a sharp electrical hiss, followed by a laughably sped up version of the Latin choir that had been playing in the background, which ground to a halt in a metallic shriek. Smoke rose from the gramophone.
“Goddesses, be happy that your mask has a filtration system, this stinks.” Kassandra narrowed her eyes. The air recyclers of her room turned a degree louder, trying to deal with the smoke. “Fuck, I think this thing is going to catch fire, but I can’t risk getting shocked by unplugging...”
Wordlessly, Tali had reached for the cord of the gramophone from the coupling. Kassandra tilted her head.
“What? These gloves are strongly insulated,” Tali remarked.
“Huh. Neat. VI, what the fuck is going on with the fucking power?”
“The ship experienced a random FTL based power surge. Please do not worry. All appliances on this ship are up to galactic travel standards and will function without problem in such an event.”
“Well, fuck the technology that was created when we thought that impossible, then.” Kassandra took a peak at the gramophone. “Well, at least it still looks nice? I think I know a museum or two that would happily accept it as a donation.”
“You swear more than usual.”
“No shit. I am seeing someone I love get hurt by systems way outside my control. That makes me angry. Reasonably so, I think.”
“The artifact did not hurt me. My gloves are insulated, remember?”
“I am not talking about the gramophone.” Kassandra sighed and dropped back onto the couch. “What even constitutes ‘natural’ sex in the eyes of all these fucks? It’s not like our evolution has prepared us to have intergalactic orgies.”
“I think they mean ‘without artificial objects and barriers’.”
“Congratulations, Humanity. We have created colonies across the galaxy yet people still haven’t moved past the mentality that ‘it’s not the same with a condom’. I am so proud of us.”
Kassandra rolled up her pants and placed Tali’s hands on her lower leg. “‘Without artifical objects’? I would not have made it to space without my artifical bone replacements in my legs. The ones I was born with could not hold weight and were susceptible to inertia.”
Kassandra guided Tali’s fingers across the veins visible on her hand and wrist. “My blood is lab-grown. I was born with several conditions. One of them turns my blood weaker at transporting oxygen as it runs through my veins. It takes me a minute hooked up to a machine each day to replenish my body with working blood.”
Finally, she pressed Tali’s hot glove against the side of her face. “My eyes, big surprise, also didn’t work properly at birth. My lenses were carved out of specialized purple diamonds. Does this make any of my actions unnatural? Is every step I take not my own? Is the beating of my heart and the flow of my blood inhuman? Look into my eyes. Is the love you see right now less true just because my body didn’t create every single piece of my eye?”
Kassandra squeezed Tali's hand. “Look, I have as much knowledge of Quarian culture as the next Human, but I vaguely understand that you have learned to look at the suits as more than mere pieces of clothing. Your people consider them to be a piece of self, don’t they?”
“We do. Yes.”
“I love all of you. Your entire self. Every piece of it. Including the piece of you that is your suit. And I know a Human’s aesthetic taste counts for jackshit, but by the Goddesses, Tali, your suit is so beautiful. You are so magnificent. I love you. I love you. Do not let the rest of Humanity convince you otherwise. So far from Earth and not one step away from our sins. I fucking hate it.”
“You left Earth behind to seek beauty in the stars and you seem so disappointed in what you found. I am sorry.”
Kassandra tilted her head forward so that her forehead touched the top of Tali’s helmet. “Tali, I did find so much more than I ever dreamed of among the stars. I found you.”